Celestyal Cruises has confirmed that this coming Middle East cruise season it will become the latest cruise line to enter the region’s cruise market for the first time with the deployment of a cruise ship targetting local cruisers.
Kyriakos Anastassiadis, CEO of Celestyal Cruises, has confirmed that the cruise ship Celestyal Olympia will be homeported in Dubai for the 2017/18 cruise season.
The 1,664-passenger ship will offer three- and four-night roundtrip cruises from Dubai taking in Muscat (Oman), Doha (Qatar) and Bahrain until April 2018.
“We’re adding something new to the Gulf,” said Anastassiadis. “All the other cruise lines operating in the Gulf operate seven-day itineraries, we want to offer something different.”
Celestyal Cruises may be targeting the region’s fast-growing source market for cruises. Many Middle East expats and nationals have expressed an interest in roundtrip cruises from Dubai, but cite the week-long itineraries as prohibitive in terms of getting time off work.
Celestyal’s announcement comes as the cruise line plans to add two newbuilds to the fleet in the coming years.
Two new ships by 2021
According to a report by Cruise Critic, the cruise line is planning to have two new ships built by 2021.
“The ultimate objective is to get into new builds, but it’s a lot of money,” Anastassiadis said. “We are in active discussions about new builds and we are working with a designer in terms of specifications. We don’t want to get into big vessels, the maximum size we are looking at would be 1,800 passengers and around 60,000 tons.”
The new ships would be designed for three- or four-day itineraries, and all outside cabins would have balconies.
Celestyal Cruises currently operates three ships — Celestyal Olympia, Celestyal Crystal and Celestyal Nefeli. Its youngest ship was launched 24 years ago.
The cruise line will take delivery of two more ships, Thomson Majesty and Thomson Spirit, next November, which date from 1992 and 1983, respectively.
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